Discourse Analysis of English and Arabic Newspaper Opinion Editorials: Cohesive Devices Patterning and Implications for Teaching Translation and Writing
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Date
2016-01
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The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
The present study investigates the roles of cohesive devices in English and Arabic newspaper opinion editorials and the common patterns that exist between the two languages as far as the use of cohesive devices is concerned. Two famous opinion columnists have been chosen, Thomas L. Friedman and Ahmed Hasan Al-Zubi. Ten articles written by each columnist have been selected using systematic sampling (SS) within which both purposive, criterion-based sampling and random sampling have been used. The articles have been analysed using the quantitative and qualitative textual analysis within an embedded, mixed methods approach. While the analysis has been in great part of qualitative nature, descriptive statistics have been provided to describe basic features of the data and to avoid subjective judgments. In order to provide descriptive statistics pertaining to numerals, percentages and concordances of cohesive devices, WordSmith Tool 6.0 (Scott 2015) has been utilised within a thick, qualitative description of the roles cohesive devices have played in all the twenty articles. The study has attempted to answer the following questions: 1) What are the roles played by cohesive devices in English and Arabic opinion articles?, 2) What are the patterns related to the roles of cohesive devices? and 3) What are the common patterns, if any, that exist in English and Arabic opinion articles as far as cohesive devices are concerned? The study has found that cohesive devices have played a number of various roles that fall under six broad categories in the two sets of articles. Following the identification of these roles, a cross-language patterning has been conducted to find out the common patterns between the two sets of articles at two levels: role-related patterns and patterns pertinent to the use of cohesive devices. Finally, the pedagogical implications for English-Arabic translation and writing have been outlined.
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discourse analysis, Education, Bilingual., Mass media and public opinion -- Middle East., teaching translation, English-Arabic translation